A Soldier and Child Care

A tribunal is considering how much the MoD must pay a female soldier after she won her case against the Army for sexual and racial discrimination.

Tilern DeBique, 28, was disciplined after not appearing on parade because she had to look after her daughter.

The corporal could be paid up to £100,000 for loss of earnings, injury to feelings and aggravated damages.

The MoD said personnel with children "are responsible for ensuring they have childcare arrangements in place".

Cpl DeBique was told the Army was "unsuitable for a single mother who couldn't sort out her childcare arrangements".

The judge who ruled on the MoD's appeal called it an unusual case, because Cpl DeBique was a Foreign and Commonwealth soldier serving in the British Army, as well as being a single mother.

When I read this article, I felt an initial surge of sympathy for the soldier in question, but very quickly had second thoughts. The Judge's final analysis will have far reaching effects on our armed services. You will see from the text of the press release, that the soldier was warned that the army was unsuitable in her circumstance, and that the MoD are figuring out how much to pay out! She has won her case.

There is an old saying, "When you open the floodgates, you can't tell the water where to go", and this is very true and applies in this case. Where will it end now? Will we have soldiers serving in war torn areas who get flown home because their child care gets messed up? Will it apply to men as well as women? What if a soldier on the front line gets word that her/his child is ill, and the child carer can't manage? This all worries me on a number of levels.

Surely, in the interest of national security, any serving soldier takes the responsibility of nation over all else? I don't think the Taliban or Al Qaeda have a similar policy. I think they take their cause seriously. Are they really laughing at us now? They have every right to!

This has all been raised under the banner of our 'discrimination laws'. I wonder if the architects of this law ever saw this one coming? I don't think so. There are some laws in the UK which can be used in strange ways, like this one and that old chestnut, the 'Health and Safety' law.

Now that the floodgates are open, will we see a raft of service men and women claiming compensation for child care in the Army, Navy and Air Force? It would seem so.

Are our armed services now seen as 'employers', or is it too much to ask that they behave and operate as our National Defenders? What has happened to that old fashioned word, 'duty'?

This soldier, and the judge, obviously agree that the child care responsibility lies with the Ministry of Defence, and not the parent. I would agree on most counts for most employers, but shouldn't our armed forces be a special case, and exempt from this crazy law? It's too late now. The precedent has been set, and the MoD is wide open for the abuse of unhappy and unsettled soldiers! What have we done?????